Few people noticed in 1998 when the Texas Board of Education dropped earth science
from the high school curriculum. Last summer, the geoscience community found out,
however, and began to let Texas authorities know how they felt: Dropping earth
science is a bad idea.

Now everybody is paying attention.

Beginning in 1998, the state implemented the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills
(TEKS) standards, which define what high school seniors must know before they
graduate. Under TEKS standards, the only science courses high school students
are required to take are biology, chemistry and physics. They must take one other
science course of their choosing, and could conceivably take an earth science
class. But school districts are not required to offer courses other than those
specifically named in TEKS.

In November, Linda Knight, associate director of the Houston Independent School
District/Rice University Model Science Lab, was trying to learn who taught the
environmental science and geology, meteorology and oceanography class at a Houston
high school. She could not find one. Knight says a counselor told her that the
geology, meteorology and oceanography course was a remedial science and that the
state only wanted students to learn biology, chemistry and physics.

The earth science community was slow to realize what had happened.

“I certainly know that the geoscience community was asleep at the switch,” said
David Dunn, a geoscience professor and dean emeritus of at the University of Texas
at Dallas. “We simply were not paying any attention to what was going on — and
we should have been. We were remiss in not knowing about this as it was happening.
We might have been able to prevent it had we been alert.”

According to Dunn, earth science was also dropped from the list of topics to be
included on the eighth-grade science test. The highest grade level for which earth
science is now required is the fifth grade.

“I’m sure they teach that water runs downhill, that some rocks get eroded and
some don’t — some pretty straightforward concepts,” Dunn said. “But the sophisticated
linkage of biology, chemistry and physics as it occurs in the solution of earth
science problems can’t possibly be comprehended at the fifth-grade level.”

Harold Pratt, president of the National Science Teachers Association, thinks that
what happened in Texas is part of a widespread phenomenon — states simplify curricula
in order to make it easier for students to pass standardized tests required for
graduation.

“You’re forced to give that test long before their senior year,” Pratt said. “It’s
best in the junior year or even near the end of the sophomore year. The main reason
for that is you want to give students several chances to retake the test if they
don’t come up with a passing grade the first time.”

Thus, while the standards outline subjects to be mastered during four years of
high school, the student has significantly less time to demonstrate proficiency
in them.

“Suddenly the time allowed to meet the standard is compressed,” Pratt said. “The
testing groups don’t take that into consideration when they start building the
tests and then they say, ‘We can’t get this all in.’

“Most school districts try to fiddle around with the curriculum, and something
had to give, so often it’s earth science because it is many times taught in the
ninth grade or it wasn’t considered to be quite the same science as the others.”

Although the changes in Texas took effect in 1998, Marcus Milling first heard
of them a few months ago. Milling is executive director of the American Geological
Institute, which publishes Geotimes.

“I was down in Austin last summer, in July, and I had heard rumors and hearsay
about what was happening and what wasn’t happening related to earth science in
high school in Texas,” Milling said. “I just wanted to try to clarify it and understand
what was really going on.”

He arranged a meeting with Irene Pickhardt, assistant director of science at the
Texas Education Association, in July.

“That’s when I learned that earth science was being dropped as a core science
credit course for Texas high school science graduation,” Milling says “and that
they were simply going to teach biology and integrated science for the two-credit
minimum requirement and biology, chemistry and physics for the advanced requirement.
So with that, I came back and got Ed Roy engaged and we started a campaign to
see if we couldn’t get it fixed.”

Milling and Roy, who is chairman of the AGI’s education advisory committee as
well as a geology professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, wrote a letter
to Grace Shore, chairman of the Texas Board of Education, saying that the omission
of earth science at the high school level was a “step backwards” for Texas and
pointing out the importance of earth sciences to the state’s economy.

For example, Milling says, Texas public schools can access a $26 billion trust
fund developed from royalties from oil and gas and mining productions on public
lands. “You have this school fund that’s been built on the natural resources from
the state, which geoscientists have largely produced,” Milling points out. “And
then the school board is going to rule earth sciences irrelevant.”

They also pointed out that the Texas curriculum requirements do not meet the National
Research Council’s National Science Education Standards, which suggest that earth
science be treated as a core subject from kindergarten through the eighth grade.

Shore happened to agree with them — her primary business is in the oil and gas
industry. She also said she would “support actions” to change the guidelines.

Milling and Roy began spreading the word about the Texas curriculum change among
members of the earth science establishment. Texas education authorities began
receiving a host of letters, and the board of education’s instruction committee
held a hearing on the earth science curriculum on Jan. 10. Twenty-eight witnesses
— including educators, energy executives, an astronaut and two college students
— testified in favor of including earth science in the high school curriculum.

Shore said that this month the instruction committee will begin studying how to
return earth science to the curriculum.

“It’s very important that the people who are interested in this keep addressing
this committee with either a letter or telephone call — with some follow-up,”
Shore said.

She added that any changes will take a lot of work.

“The first step will be to develop the curriculum items,” Shore said. “After the
curriculum items have already been developed and approved for high schools, then
we will have to get a textbook approved. So it is going to be a lengthy process
to get it put back in. That’s why it’s a shame that it got taken out.”

Roy was in action a few days later at the Texas Science Summit, an annual meeting
to discuss science education in the state. Roy reported that Jim Nelson, commissioner
of the Texas Education Agency, expressed concern about the status of earth science
education in the state. Roy, along with Dunn and geologist and businessman Stan
Pittman, have begun organizing a task force to help support the board of education
and the education agency as the groups begin to address the issue.

“We don’t want to go in and tell them what to do,” Roy said. “We want them to
know that we stand ready and AGI stands ready to help whenever it is asked. And
I think we need to be forceful enough to make our presence known and say, ‘Look,
we’re here. Help us. We’ll help you.’ “

Jack Cooper, president of the Texas Earth Science Teachers Association, thinks
the effort by the earth science community has already yielded one big benefit
— that it has halted the decline in earth science education it Texas. But Cooper
wants more.

“What we’re hoping for is a reversal,” Cooper said, “to go back and mandate a
course offered at the high school level.”Lawrence is a Geotimes contributing
writer.